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Appraisal Video: (0:54)

GUEST: Well, I brought this steam whistle that came from a train that my great-great-grandfather was the engineer on. And it's accompanied with a photograph of him in the cab. He worked for the New York Central Railroad.

APPRAISER: It's really not that often that you can find a great steam whistle, you know, let alone a multiple stage steam whistle, plus a picture of the train it actually came from. To have those two together is very rare. And looking at it, I see some similarities there, but it's missing some bits on the top. It's not quite complete.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: But the bulk of it is fantastic. Railroad collectors love this sort of thing. They love the largest steam whistles, the bigger the better. You can see smaller ones all the time for $300, $400, sometimes up to $500 or $600. Something this large, with the accompanying photograph, with the family history, I might give it an auction estimate between $2,000 and $2,500 for something this big.